


Tell Me Where It Hurts

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Comfort Sex, Cunnilingus, F/M, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Reconciliation Sex, Stress Relief, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:54:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5001985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They agreed to rebuild, but things haven't been quite the same. Waiting for word from those left behind in the Arbor Wilds, Rainier comes to her again.</p><p>Set immediately post-What Pride Had Wrought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me Where It Hurts

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for a request for these two and the prompt 'shields' over on tumblr, that I really enjoyed writing during a long weekend at home!

*

It’s long-dark by the time Caitrin leaves for her quarters, exhausted, sore, and bitterly frustrated without information from the Arbor Wilds about her Inquisition. She is a pragmatic person, she knows it was _necessary_  to leave through the eluvian and she is quite sure that Corypheus will leave the Inquisition forces untouched. His duplicity exposed, Calpernia has abandoned him. The Well is drained. She should be _exultant_.

But no crow will fly fast enough to bring news of Cullen, Leliana, or any of those she left behind, and so she cannot celebrate.

She can’t sleep, and she won’t remember things as clearly whenever her advisors return–because they _will_  return to her, she must believe they will–so she locks herself in Josephine’s office and writes her reports. And when she’s burned through three of Josephine’s favorite candles, she decides that there nothing left to be done about it and snuffs out the fourth.

The hall is empty when she steps from the north corridor, though the fires are still burning strongly. Not magic, she thinks, crossing the circle of warmth stretching from one of them on her way to her quarters, and so someone must have been awake to tend them.

“Inquisitor.”

Caitrin is almost to the door at the front of the hall when she hears his voice, and she hesitates before turning her head. She must be more tired than she’d thought, because she hadn’t seen him sitting in the shadows at the end of the hall. Maybe he meant to be unobtrusive, but _dwarva_  see well in the dark, and she sees him now as clear as if it were fully day outside.

“Blackwall,” she says stiffly, but it’s Rainier now, of course. It has _always_  been Rainier, even when she didn’t know.

He pushes himself from his chair with a muffled noise that suggests discomfort and Caitrin remembers that the colder nights in Skyhold pain an old wound in his knee, though she doesn’t remember how he told her he came about it. Perhaps it’s better she doesn’t remember, so she doesn’t have to wonder if it’s the truth.

When Rainier is only a few paces from her, his eyes find hers and even though she’s still wearing most of her armor, Caitrin feels utterly exposed to him. She looks away, beckoning him to follow her through the door to her quarters.

Carrying on with him is harder than she thought it would be at his Judgment. He’d seen through her desperate attempt to protect her heart back in the prison, called her on that bluff, but _loving_  him doesn’t excuse him for lying to her, breaking her heart, and making her feel as though he’d always been judging her for things that are no longer within her control.

Even though she truly wanted to start fresh with him then, Caitrin is beginning to think that the only way forward with Thom Rainier is resolving those things rather than avoiding them.

They’re halfway up the stairs to her room when Rainier clears his throat, takes a breath. Caitrin is a few steps ahead of him when she turns toward him and finds that he’s standing at the bottom of the steps with a puzzled expression.

“I didn’t come to you for this, my lady,” he attempts, hanging back as she ascends the rest of the stairs.

“I believe you,” she agrees, “but as long as you’re coming to me, I’d rather it were privately.” The scandal gripped Skyhold for weeks, never mind the bloodthirsty courts of Orlais and Ferelden, who relished the spectacle Rainier made of them. Things are only just settling again, refocusing on the things that mattered most, and Caitrin is not enthusiastic about reigniting any gossip about her.

Caitrin crosses the room to her wardrobe and begins the laborious process of removing her armor. She ought to have changed hours ago, her muscles thank her with tangled up aches that stretch from her calves to her shoulders, and she now removes her breastplate with unmasked relief.

Rainier mounts the stairs, his footfalls softening when he reaches the thick-woven carpets at the top, and she has only managed to remove a couple of the buckles across her mud-splattered boot when he comes behind her. “Let me,” he exhales somewhere over her head, more a request than an offer, and rests one broad hand on her elbow.

Caitrin allows him to steer her to a chair, where he kneels in front of her and sets to work. His fingers are gentler, slower than hers are, as if the act of removing her armor is sacred rather than routine. When Rainier slides her free of the boot and unwraps her foot, he sets it to the side and presses his thumb into the hardened muscle until it releases and Caitrin rests the crown of her head on the back of the chair. Tension flows like water from her toes, but her eyes fly open again when his whiskered lips brush past the arch of her bare foot to rest tenderly on her ankle bone.

“Thom,” she sighs without a second thought and, though Rainier’s eyes raise to hers and a fleeting shadow crosses his face, he turns his attention to removing her other boot. He mirrors his attentive ministrations on this leg before he moves on to unbuckling her leathers and removing those, too. She doesn’t stop him, and so he moves on, removing all that is left of her armor and the light padding she wears under before hesitating again, one hand on the at her waist until she looks down at him.

They haven’t touched like this since that night in the hayloft. Not one to linger on the past, Caitrin is not used to the distance that has sprung up between them and she isn’t sure how to love him without completely forgiving him yet. But she misses him, the man she loves, not the illusion he created, and she misses _this_ , and that is enough for her right now.

“Yes,” she says to his silent question, just as he opens his mouth and starts to ask, “May I?”

Rainier rolls down her wool leggings down as Caitrin lifts her hips for him. Her eyes close lazily and Rainier touches the pad of his thumb to her knees, finding a small, deep bruise to the side of it.

“You ought to carry a shield,” he murmurs into the bend of her knee, kissing the dusky mark on her leg. “Or else be careful.”

She laughs. They’ve had this argument before, where he insists she should be careful and maybe she won’t be hurt as much. Caitrin assures him that this is how it has always been, it has made her more effective, but she’ll try to temper her recklessness. She doesn’t assure him of that now, but it somehow a comfort to know that Rainier worries about these things the way that Blackwall did.

“There are more,” she says instead, lifting her tunic so he can see the blackening mark on her side, where the broad side of a Venatori sword made hard contact, but failed to cut through her armor. Rainier’s eyes follow the outline of the bruise, his fingers lifted, and then he lowers his face to trace the rough edge with his lips. His beard tickles the sensitive skin, leaving Caitrin to squirm and hope he won’t stop.

When his eyes lift to hers once more, she sees the question in his eyes, and answers by bending forward to untie the front of his tunic. He’s dressed lighter than usual, perhaps because he went to see a healer as she ought to have, and she pulls the garment over his head with swift ease.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to criticize, Ser Rainier. It seems your shield only does you so much help,” she remarks casually, resting her fingertips on his faded bruises, more stark on his untanned skin than on hers.

“Cait,” he sighs out, his voice heavy with want. All of him is still, waiting for her to give him permission to do more. She feels about to break from the tension tugging at her from every side, but when she surges forward and captures his mouth with hers, the familiar flood of sensation is a relief. Rainier hooks his fingers under her smallclothes and peels them away, leaving Caitrin to shrug off her top. When he looks down at her again, she meets his stare and sees emotions warring there, the things he wants to say and is holding back.

“Later,” she suggests and brings his hands to her waist. There will be time to worry later, and time more for talking when the worrying is done.

Rainier needs little encouragement beyond that, lifting her hips and pulling her toward him. She doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he rests her legs on his shoulders and lays a warm kiss on her thigh, glancing up at her with his warm, calloused fingers feeling along her labia. His nose bumps against her clit and she stifles her first moan, but not the louder one when his tongue probes gently along her slit, then swipes boldly upward. Caitrin’s hands fist in his hair and she arches from the chair, tension sliding from her spine as his mouth moves over her cunt.

“Thom.” His name falls again from her mouth as she tries to catch her breath, no more intentional than the flick of her fingernails on his scalp, but Caitrin wonders immediately if it’s the right thing to have said. His eyes rise to hers, but he doesn’t move away and he reacts even less than the first time. Then he blinks his eyes closed and does _something_  with the tip of his tongue, and his fingers curl warmly along the curve of her ass, and–

Without warning, without the customary slow-burn that defines her climax, Caitrin finds that her whole body is going numb with agonizing, outrageous pleasure. Everything centers around the point of the universe where his lips close over her clit, and then explodes outward with force enough that her vision abruptly blacks out.

When she has some control over her weak limbs again, Caitrin slumps forward, swinging her legs on either side of his knees. She searches his eyes for any sign of regret and, finding none, leans in to kiss him slowly, tasting her wetness on his mouth. She presses her knees into the floor on either side of his thighs, taking his cheeks in her hands. This isn’t better yet, but it has a chance to be better than what it was before.

Rainier’s eyes blink closed sedately, unconcerned with anything she’s doing. Though she can very clearly see the outline of his cock in his soft, spun wool leggings, he doesn’t seem in any hurry to attend to his needs. Instead, he parts his mouth to her and strokes the small of her back in slow circles with his thumbs. Caitrin doesn’t know she’s ever seen him this vulnerable, so very unguarded, but she finds that it–trusting her–suits him quite well. Leaning past her hands, Rainier rests his forehead against her shoulder, circling his arms around her.

“The others will be okay,” he whispers into her ear, sending a fresh shiver through her spent body. “You have to trust that.”

“Yes,” she sighs, remembering what it was she thought they’d talk about; deciding that this is much better. Caitrin pushes herself to her feet and draws him toward the bed, and he follows. 

“That’s what I came here to tell you,” he whispers, and when he pushes forward and kisses her neck, she is so relaxed that she does not even squirm at the tickle of his beard on the sensitive skin there. “That was all.”


End file.
